hey at least m'iaq will have something to talk about

I agree that was the one of the main problems with Oblivion's leveling. The need to raise skills that you would never use just to get +4 or +5's in a certain attribute. If I want to master exclusively in Blade why should I have to raise Hand to Hand a skill that I would never use just to get a +5.

Let's look at the attributes :
Strength increased melee damage, fatigue and encumbrance allowance. If there are perks for carrying capacity and you take one, take a stamina at level up, and increase one and two handed, the effects are the same. Personally I would prefer a race and body type allowance, with maybe a perk to increase it, over being able to get a Breton mage to max. strength, and 500 encumbrance allowance.

Endurance increased health and stamina, we can increase our health and stamina anyway.

Willpower increased stamina and magicka regeneration, still waiting for details on magicka.

Intelligence is effectively interchangeable with magicka.

Speed seems to gone totally, still waiting for info on whether run speed is affected by armour, encumbrance, race or body type, all I can say on this is that OB running speed was lots of fun, but totally unrealistic.

Agility affected bow damage, fatigue, and resistance to knockdown. we can increase bow skill and stamina, unknown whether there are perks related to knockdowns and staggering.

Personality seems to have pretty common concensus regarding it's utter uselessness. If there are perks for haggling, etiquette and streetwise, I'd say a vast improvement, but we have to wait and see.

Luck increased all skills, nothing more, just increase all your skills a bit for the same effect.

If we have perks for encumbrance, magicka regeneration rate, run speed and jump distance, stagger resistance, buying, selling and speech, then nothing has changed, except some stats have gone, and been replaced with a choice to take certain perks.
Whether removing attributes is good or bad seems to me to be dependent on the perk system, if perks give your character everything the stats did, nothing really has changed, you just have less numbers.

How many perks do we need to have the same sort of attributes as in Oblivion or Morrowind ? Probably more than we can get, but do you really want to be the most agile person more agile than a cat that can endure more hardships than any other person while being the smartest and luckiest person alive while being the most charismatic bard in the whole lands that can run faster than horses while lifting boulders the size of a dragon while having such willpower that no one can sway you ?

You′d put Goku, Superman and even the lord himself to shame.


For me I think I will stick to certain things, namely for my Skyrim character I will have a lot of endurance, a good amount of strength and possibly a bit of willpower if possible. But not everything. I bet there will be console commands to get all the perks if you really need to be that powerful.

It′s intended to create more diversity and I can only welcome that change.

Edit: The stats may not be called their names but it has been said that everything you could get from stats in Oblivion you can get in Skyrim just under different names and perks.

I think the stamina may affect the speed, like whenever you level it up you increase stamina a bit, but we also have sprinting and shouts so I think speed is taken care of

I feel I am the only one who thinks that I have more freedom without attributes because I don't have to depend on it to improve my skills.

I never thought I'd think it... but its starting to make sense to me that it should ship with a hardcoe core mode (not recommended), that uses the standard TES attributes.

(An interesting second or third mod project ~perhaps.)

So you want the strength attribute to represent how much more melee damage you can do than somebody with less. This is exactly what Bethesda was talking about. You aren't raising strength to be stronger, you are raising it to hit harder, or carry more stuff. Why not just have a perk that allows you to do more melee damage, or carry more stuff. You are getting the same outcome, just a different vehicle to get there.

What you said, it has a name. It's called HITTING THEN NAIL RIGHT ON THE HEAD

You or someone else in a previous thread described the perk system as a tech tree. That is exactly what it is. A straight-forward system for unlocking skills and abilities. While this is a great system for unlocking skills and abilities I am unsure if it is wise to use it to do the things that an attribute system (a completely different animal) is meant to do.

- Will I really have to waste a perk on altering my encumbrance?
- Will I really have to waste a perk on increasing my rate of magicka regeneration, my total available magicka?

This actually becomes an even more fake and contrived system to do what an actual attribute system is meant to do... If this is what they have planned, then I fear Bethesda is way off track. They are using a tech tree as a poor-mans substitute to an attribute system that they already had in place.

The whole attribute system can possibly still be in place but just be a more behind the scene type thing. If perhaps, the more you use magicka then over time your rate of regen/total amount available slowly ticks up behind the scenes. Maybe the heavier loads you carry, behind the scenes your total strength and total encumbrance slowly ticks up. The more potions you make that don't explode.....your intelligence ticks up.... This would be great. If attributes are still there but only manipulated through action rather than the way they were before....awesome. This, IMO, would be better than the previous system. :celebration:

If not....then....I don't know. It is entirely possible they have up their sleeve an entirely new system to govern attributes that they just have not released details on yet. My primary worry is that if they use the tech tree system they will needlessly limit game play while falling back to an even more fake and contrived system.

The Attribute system was flawed they held the skills back too much and yes you might have to waste perks on encumberence but then again Beth is making the game harder not easier.

That would be a solution, IF they did it. But where would you put such a perk?

Also, if you take a different verhicle but end up in the same place, why switch vehicles in the first place?

Question to all:
Am I the only one [present] that believes that Perks should only bend the rule slightly (for the player's benefit), and not actually be the rule itself?

*For example: A perk that color codes the dialog to hint at what would anger an NPC, or a perk that treats your character as though they had a higher attribute (in one circumstance only).... This instead of picking a perk to add 20 pounds to max carry weight (and again the next time, every time you need to carry more stuff).

I think there is too much pressure on perks right now. It seems they are supposed to drive the new system, and that is a huge burden for a new feature.
Also, by making perks too important, the game is actually simplified (by narrowing it down to a single feature in the system) instead of using the perks to expand an existing system (making it more complex in the process).

Because it's more fun to ride a motorcycle than it is to ride a bus... usually. That was Todd's whole point. Leveling up is just simply 'more fun'.

Frankly, I'm tired of unconsciously spread-sheeting my character and gameplay. I'm really looking forward to the new system where my character 'is' what I 'do'. That's the way it should be.

- Will I really have to waste a perk on making axes do damage-over-time?
- Will I really have to waste a perk on making maces ignore armor?

It's not wasting if it's a good investment. It's the way the system works.You're going to be able to pick no less than 50 perks. Especially if you're specializing, that should be more than enough to get really good at something.

Yes - I believe that removing them will remove some nuance from the game and that perks aren't a valid substitute.

As someone (I can't remember who or I'd give credit) put it yesterday, attributes are generalizations and perks are specifics.

"He's a strong guy. Who's good with a sword."
"He's a smart guy. Who's good with a sword."

Those simple phrases describe two different people, and one can imagine, fairly easily, ways in which they're different. That immediate differentiation is only possible because of "attributes." Without them, we get.

"He's good with a sword."
"He's good with a sword."

Poof. No more differentiation. That can't possibly add to the game.


And as I've pointed out a couple of times now - you, I and everyone else on the planet in fact possess "attributes." We, each and all of us, have at least roughly quantifiable amounts of strength, endurance, agility, intelligence, etc. These aren't some imaginary thing that Beth just conjured up somewhere along the way and stuffed into a game, and that they're just as easily dropping later. They represent real, observable and measureable qualities. Those qualities exist in every single being, merely by dint of that being's existence. Yet now, they will no longer exist in our TES characters.

And I don't buy the PR spin that they're being removed because they're "redundant" or "exploitable" or the getting-extremely-tedious-and-predictable talking-point buzzword "spreadsheety," but because it would require the investment of some amount of resources to balance attributes with the (wholly artificial) "perks," and Beth isn't willing to invest those resources.


Ah, but this is all pointless. The inclusion of attributes - the investment of the necessary time to balance them in the game - would entail the sacrifice of some other feature and would only appeal to the more serious and complexity-appreciating gamers, and Beth really has little incentive to appeal to them (us). Beth has to be sure not to alienate us too much, but they have much more room to move on our side of the design than on the other - the parts of the game that will appeal to the casual gamer who will pick this up and play it for a bit, then move on. That for the simple reason that we will buy the game anyway. If we're deeply into roleplaying games, unless Beth just completely screws the pooch on this one, we'll buy it anyway. We might complain, and might do so loud and long, but our money will still make its way into Beth's earnings reports. But if they put the game together in such a way as to appeal to us while alienating the casual gamers, the casual gamers simply won't bother buying it - they'll just skip right over it and go immediately to the next game. So from Beth's perspective, things that appeal to us are much more easily sacrificed than things that appeal to the casual gamer. And things that appeal to us therefore will be sacrificed in exchange for things that appeal to the casual gamer. And it will hardly be the first time....

They could either have some perks that can be taken by anybody. Or have some perks that have a few possibilities for skills. For increased melee damage, if your 1-handed, 2-handed, or unarmed is at a certain level, you can take it.

The reason the changed vehicles is this makes more sense to people who completely invest themselves into a game, or are new to it. While it makes some sense that strength would increase melee damage and carrying capacity, it isn't as intuitive that endurace gives you more HP, or that Agility increases damage done by bows (accuracy is important, but so is how strong you are to use a stronger bow).

We only know a small percentage of the new changes. While it is an abrupt change to get rid of attributes, until we know how they are implementing them elsewhere, we should be cautiously optimistic.


What made him a smart guy in Oblivion. Was his fighting tactics better, could he do mathematical calulations faster, did he understand physics better so that he could apply the proper force to do more damage, or did he just have more magicka than the "stupid" guy?

No it's more like:
"He's good with a sword. And he can take a lot of hit"
"He's good with a sword, and he can do a lot of magic too"

You do know, you can choose to raise your health/magicka/stamina, right?

Still two different people...

You don't 'do' perks, you choose them at level up. The new system is a move away from the 'You are what you do' philosophy of previous TES games.

You don't 'do' attributes. If you choose a perk, as in: +5 lockpicking, you 'do' it.

I'm not... I miss it.

This system (described in that way), doesn't qualify as an RPG to me; Though I do understand that many want to play that way.

An Attribute system defines the PC (short for Player [controlled] Character) in their current state of being. It assumes their past (something that TES don't seem to have, unless I missed it), and their preference.

Past & Preference is supposed to be what players use to affect their in game decisions [IE. to play the role]. TES games have no PC past, only present, but they had stats :shrug:. Now IIRC... 'Die by the Sword' had no stats, but did have a modest PC 'past' (such as it was). Both games were servicable RPGs IMO (depending on the definition), but to have no past and no stats equates to no role IMO; that equates to no role playing IMO. That [IMO] makes the PC into a costume (Like a rented Tux, or a Batman, or Predator suit ~and we've all seen the guy in the guy in the rented suit just acting like himself... IE. not playing the role).
This is my reason that this sounds like it doesn't qualify as an RPG to me.

You cast away an open system to become dependent on the rigid, predefined inflexibility of a tech tree? Is that freedom?